


On Obliviousness and Denial

by ShiningFrost



Category: Persona 5
Genre: F/M, Fluff, In denial Futaba, Oblivious Yusuke, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Valentine’s Day, White Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-22 11:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16597001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiningFrost/pseuds/ShiningFrost
Summary: Futaba gives and receives chocolates for the first time.





	1. Valentine’s Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The muse of fluff inspiration gave me a rare visit and hit me with a hammer, resulting in this out-of-season fic.

“You have _admirers_?” Incredulity dripped from Futaba's voice.

Yusuke raised an eyebrow, which was all the time he had to consider being offended before she pushed him aside. She dug through his locker, knocking over bags of heart-shaped chocolates.

Futaba took one and unwrapped it. “Who gave these to you?”

Yusuke shrugged. “I do not know her name. She is in my physics class. Or my history one. Maybe both?” He cast his mind back, trying to remember the dark-haired girl who had tossed the package at him before rushing off.

Futaba plopped the chocolate into her mouth, chewing slowly. Her expression was neutral. He doubted it was a commentary on the quality of the chocolate. Futaba did not have a discerning palette, despite his multiple attempts to teach her the subtle difference between iodized table salt vs pink Himalayan.

“What about those?” She pointed.

He followed her finger to a bag whose ribbon had loosened, spilling orange-wrapped chocolates. That was from the girl with the bright silver necklace. He was pretty sure. “I do not recall seeing her before. Perhaps someone in your class, or the second years.”

Yusuke expected a witty retort, some amused commentary on how of course only girls he never spoke to would give him chocolates because as soon as he opened his mouth they would run to the hills and deposit the confectionaries with a local wild boar rather than risk further contact with him. Futaba liked her words sharp, but Yusuke didn't mind. She reserved her teasing for people she trusted, for those close to her. He was honored to be among them.

Futaba stayed silent, even after she had swallowed the last of the chocolate. Her throat was well-defined. Yusuke watched the bolus of food travel downwards and waited, in case she was preparing a particularly scathing remark.

Nothing came.

“Futaba?”

She jerked her head, glancing up at him before averting her gaze.

“Did you get chocolates last year?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t mention it.” Her tone was accusatory.

He looked at her askance. She didn’t see it. “I was more preoccupied with Akira’s release from prison, as were you."

“How often do you get chocolates on Valentine’s Day?”

Yusuke counted the years. “The first time was when I started junior high. It has happened every year since.”

“Every year?” Her pitch was high, almost a squeak.

He nodded, then said “Yes” out loud since she still wasn’t looking at him.

Yusuke stepped closer to puzzle out what was holding her attention. He didn’t smell rotting food, so he couldn’t have left another partially-eaten container of cantaloupe in his locker.

Futaba often described him as having a 73% chance to be bewitched by a random ordinary object, but he didn’t find anything interesting inside. His art supplies, two textbooks, and an extra uniform in case he spilled paint on the one he was wearing. She’d nailed a group picture of the Phantom Thieves at Cafe Leblanc to the wall. Yusuke had resigned himself to the fine for damaging Kosei’s property.

She might be considering her next move in vandalizing his locker. He should ask the Kosei administrators to change the combination.

“Have you...have you ever returned any, on White Day?”

“I do not have the know-how to make chocolates, nor the spare money to purchase any.“ Or the interest. In those dark days, his focus had been on his art, and Madarame.

“Oh. Cool.” Her shoulders relaxed, and Yusuke realized she’d been tense.

Perhaps she was re-familiarizing herself with the blasé traditions of ordinary students. It had been years since she last attended school, and the time in between had been fraught with difficulty. She’d settled well into the normal life of high school but days like today, with giggling girls chasing smirking boys, must be jarring after months of routine.

“Let’s go to lunch.” Futaba moved away from the locker and smacked into him.

He tingled from the contact, from the feel of her body against his. His breath hitched.

It lasted half a second before she shoved him away.

Yusuke staggered. His mind reeled, not from the lack of balance but from the imprint of where her hands had touched his chest.

“Personal space!” Her eyes were wide, her face flushed.

He opened his mouth to protest that she never respected _his_ , but Futaba was already waltzing away.

Yusuke gave a long-suffering sigh, then followed her to their lunch spot.

* * *

They ate lunch in the small roof garden (“Nowhere near as good as Haru’s,” sniffed Futaba on their first arrival there. “Agreed. None of these flowers are edible”). Before Futaba’s acceptance into Kosei, Yusuke had spent the lunch hour in the art room, working on his paintings and not eating.

On her first day when Futaba had discovered his lunch plans, she’d stolen his canvas and stashed it in the girl’s bathroom. He’d debated going in there anyways to retrieve it, but she’d threatened to block his Internet access for the next year. The risk of not having photo references persuaded him to actually use his lunch break for lunch. She had shared her food with him that day, since his fridge only had half an onion and he’d spent that week’s budget on a decorative pirate chest for his lobsters. They’d eaten together daily since.

“If you become a concept artist, make sure to draw shorties. Everyone’s so tall in video games,” complained Futaba. “Aliens are gonna get the human race’s demographics completely wrong in their history books.”

“I will do my best to promote the dwarven cause should I find myself in that industry.”

Their conversation settled into a comfortable lull. He enjoyed talking to her, but he also enjoyed these quiet moments where they sat in each other's company. In his friendless days, he’d always felt the pressure of needing to say something, to fill in silence with clunky, unneeded words.

Yusuke was about to ask if he could eat the rest of her fried rice (she had finished half, and Sojiro would cook her something fresh for dinner, and his stomach was less environmentally destructive than a trash bin for the remainder) but paused at the look on her face, grim and determined. He’d seen that expression before, usually after they’d delivered a calling card and were about to enter a palace for the final showdown with a Shadow.

“Another presentation?” he asked. “I assure you most people won’t pay attention. I myself use that time to plan compositions for my next art pieces.”

Futaba ignored him, fishing into her backpack. She pulled out a small bundle and thrust it into his stomach with a force that almost knocked him off the bench.

“I-I’m learning how to make chocolate. Thought Sojiro could sell them at Leblanc. Ya know, ‘cause like, curry is great, but sometimes you want something sweet with your coffee. It’s good business sense. Like putting the max into your 401K.” Her words came out fast, spilling into each other like wet paint when he was blending colors.

“So here, I brought you some of my practice ones. For dessert. Didn’t want you stealing the pet hamster’s honey nut Cheerios again. I forgot it was Valentine’s. Honestly. Didn’t know you’d have plenty of your own chocolate today. But I already brought these so. Here. They’re kinda smushed, so they don’t have resell value. If you don’t want them, it’s fine. I can ship them to Morgana.”

Yusuke pulled himself back onto the bench. He took the parcel from her, and their fingers touched. She jerked her hand away.

“Thank you.” A warmness blossomed in him, a lightness in his chest that made him smile. He couldn't name the feeling - it was close to how he’d felt when Madarame confessed his crimes, a sensation of freedom, that he could take on the world with his friends beside him - but he knew it fell under the spectrum of happiness.

“I-it’s nothing.” Her cheeks were red, probably from the temperature. The air was cool and crisp.

Yusuke took out a chocolate and ate it. He brightened. It was dark chocolate, on the bitter side, just how he liked it. So she _had_ been listening when he complained how the extra sugar in milk chocolate masked the rich flavor of the cocoa beans. After that monologue, she had said he would feel right at home in a beehive with how much he droned.

His smile widened, and Futaba’s cheeks reddened further into a deep cadmium shade. He had a tube of acrylic paint that color. He could paint her like this, her lips parted, her eyes zoned on him, her long hair spilling behind her back. Looking radiant.

“This quality of this chocolate is superb,” he proclaimed. “Better than the ones Ryuji swiped from that sexist chocolatier. Better than a crossover between Godiva and Ghirardelli overseen by Gordon Ramsay. Better than the secret recipes from the highest mountains of the Swiss Alps, passed verbally from generation to generation for fear that warring chocolate factions would steal a written record.”

Futaba laughed. He had a sudden desire to whip out his phone to record the sound, to replay it during the nights he woke up sweating, dreaming of Madarame. Those nightmares were fewer now, but they happened.

Yusuke clawed back the urge and ate another chocolate instead. And another one after that. Futaba smacked his hand away when he reached for a fourth.

“I’m not gonna be responsible for you puking in the bathroom. Or all over your canvas. Or worse, on me.”

She put her hands on her hips until he tied the bag with a neat bow and put it into his lunchbox.

Yusuke reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder, ready to remove it should she show any aversion to the physical contact. She shivered but didn’t move away. “I hope this did not take too much of your time. You had that large coding project.”

“No time at all,” said Futaba, whose preparation for today began three months ago with a text to Akira asking how to make gourmet chocolates, continued with secretive weekend trips to his house to practice the art, and ended with seventeen batches she declared Not Good Enough even though the taste-testing Sojiro and Haru had assured her, really, these were quite scrumptious and Yusuke would eat anything anyways, before the eighteenth batch had finally passed her quality control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Yusuke’s response on White Day, whenever the fluff muse deigns to visit me again. Thanks for reading!


	2. White Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The muse of fluff has been kind to me.

Yusuke did not use recipes. He never had all the ingredients necessary to follow one, nor did he ever have the extra money to go out and buy them. He followed a simple strategy for groceries: whatever was on sale for the lowest yen-per-gram ratio. This ensured that the groceries he did have on hand (currently it was black beans, dried apricots, and peanut butter) wouldn’t comprise a recipe if he bothered to submit them to a Google search.

Food was food no matter how it was prepared. Yusuke enjoyed a flavorful meal - he and Sojiro had long conversations about the merits of an extra 3/4 gram of nutmeg in place of cumin for a two liter batch of curry - but at the end of the day what mattered was the caloric content.

Following a recipe was a new phenomenon for Yusuke. Without the prerequisite skills, the grocery trip was taking a lot longer than normal. A shelf stocker peeked into Yususke’s aisle, only to see the teenager still muttering to himself. She’d been hoping for the past half hour to wait the boy out (she’d had a nasty fight with her parents and wasn’t in the mood for updates on his pet lobsters). She would give him ten more minutes.

Meanwhile, Yusuke studied the item labels. Should he buy dark or extra dark cocoa powder? The smaller jar or the larger one? Buying in bulk was cheaper in the long run, but when would he use cocoa powder again? It didn’t have enough calories to be worth adding to his meals, and he didn’t think its flavor would mesh well with his typical face.

Figuring Futaba preferred her chocolates sweet, Yusuke chose the plain dark one. He picked the largest container, as he could donate the extra to Sojiro. The shelf stocker sighed in relief.

Cocoa powder was the last ingredient he needed. Yusuke put a check mark on his list and wrote down the price. He added up the costs of every ingredient and calculated he was still within budget. Thank goodness. Yusuke had spent the past month saving money, which was a skill Haru described as “Yusuke just needs a little bit of mentoring to improve“ and Futaba described as “Inari would go bankrupt with a cheat code that added unlimited funds.”

To conserve money, Yusuke had lingered outside the classroom where the cooking club met weekly and had taken home their failed creations to save on food. He hadn’t bought the bull skull with the shimmering green rhinestones embedded in the horns. He had returned the leather-bound sketchbook with a violin motif carved into the cover.

It made him wistful for the days of the Phantom Thieves. Fighting Shadows was not easy, but the jolt of adrenaline and burst of satisfaction were instant. Self-control was difficult, and the rewards were distant and intangible.

In the end, Yusuke made it by picturing Futaba’s smile.

* * *

_Step 1: Mix cocoa powder and butter in a food processor until a paste forms._

Yusuke did not have a food processor. He cleaned a wire loop sgraffito and used it to mix the ingredients together. The loop ‘s opening was similar enough to a whisk’s that it should be just as good for blending.

_Step 2: Fill a pan with water and place a bowl with the paste in the pan. Heat the paste over low heat and mix until smooth._

Yusuke played a video reviewing leg anatomy. Though he had memorized the basics a decade ago, he liked to review each section of the human anatomy once a month. Without the fundamentals, he would never master his art.

Midway through the narrator describing how the sartorius muscle wrapped around the thigh, a burned smell wafted in the air. Smoke drifted in front of his phone screen.

His head whipped towards the source, the bowl with his chocolate mixture.

Yusuke slammed the stove knob to ‘Off’ and grabbed the bowl away from the steaming pan of water. The hot glass burned his hands - he did not have insulated oven mittens - and he dropped it onto the counter. It cracked. He bit back a curse (the one time he had sworn in front of Futaba, she had gleefully ribbed him about it for a month. Bad habits were dangerous around her).

Yusuke rinsed his hands with lukewarm water to soothe the pain. Heat was an uncomfortable sensation before the Phantom Thieves and downright intolerable after his connections with Goemon and Susano-o.

He rescued the paste from the ruined bowl and transferred it to another. With the end of a chopstick, Yusuke scooped up a small glob, blew on it, and put it in his mouth. He swirled the hot paste with his tongue and searched for benign adjectives to describe the taste.

No descriptor other than ‘irrevocably scorched’ came to him. He shifted on his feet and looked around the kitchen.

His counter held a half-empty (half-full, he reminded himself. A positive outlook began at the smallest details) container of cocoa powder. The tub of butter next to it was empty.

Yusuke checked his bank account.

No good. He had rearranged the month’s budget to accommodate the ingredients for the chocolates, but he hadn’t accounted for multiple attempts. An arrogant misstep.

_Step 3: Add room temperature milk, sugar, and flour to the paste and mix well._

Yusuke brightened. Here was an opportunity for redemption.

He doubled the sugar. It should mask the burned taste, and Futaba liked milk chocolate anyways. Yusuke measured the flour next, but he paused before adding it.

While loitering outside the cooking club’s meeting room, he had overheard lectures through the thin door. They had mentioned the importance of the wet to dry ratio in food. Was that only in baking?

Best not to chance it. He dumped the flour back into its bag.

Yusuke had already pre-planned using water in place of milk to cut the costs. He added the final ingredient and stirred.

_Step 4: Pour into molds and cool._

The chocolate clung to the bowl. This was not ideal. According to the pictures, molten chocolate should be dripping sensually into whatever shape he wished.

Yusuke turned the bowl upside down and shook it. The mass of chocolate fell out, hit the molds and stubbornly held to its shape. He poked at it with a finger. It was grainy and rough and definitively in the solid state of matter.

What had he done wrong? He had improvised, but no more than he had done for his dinner of black bean stuffed apricots with peanut butter sauce.

He would have to improvise a little more.

Yusuke folded the chocolate into a cubed block, each face the length of his hand. It was a blank slate, an empty canvas to imprint, and a true artist works with any medium. He grabbed his sculpturing tools and sank a blade to the chocolate. A sliver sliced off with only a slight flick of his wrist.

Humming Violin Concerto No. 3, Yusuke went to work.

* * *

Futaba barged into his room at 07:30 sharp.

Yusuke, who had requested she come to his dorm now with the full expectation she would arrive at 08:15 (at the earliest), threw down the carving knife he’d been using to scratch in last minute hierographs. He yanked a checkered cloth on top of his chocolate creation and spun around to face her as she stomped inside.

“In the contract you signed upon confirming admission into Kosei,” said Yusuke, “there is a clause in which you promise not to duplicate any dorm room keys.”

“You don’t know how I got in.” Futaba tossed her backpack onto his bed and jumped on his futon. It creaked. “Maybe Makoto took me under her wing and leveled me up in lockpicking.”

“And that time when my keys went missing after I left you here, and they showed up in your lunchbox a week later?”

“You’re lucky I pick up after you. Good thing I got you that Bluetooth tracker for your birthday.”

Yusuke suspected she had bought him that not to prevent him from losing his items but to make sure she knew where he was at all times.

He decided against mentioning it. Even if he had rejected it, she would have found some other way to track him.

“I brought you breakfast curry,” She held up a plastic bag. “Couldn’t eat with Sojiro since you wanted to meet so goddamn early. He’s afraid your ribs are gonna pierce through your skin and stab someone so he packed extra.”

Extra food was worth an invasion of privacy.

“Thank you.” He took the bag. The smell was, as always, delectable.

She draped herself over the futon so she could watch him divide the curry. “Why'd you ask me to come here this early?”

Yusuke cleared his throat. “I have a gift for you, in response to your present from last month.”

He set his spoon down and picked up the plate that held his covered chocolate.

Futaba clamored over. “I told you, those were just practice.”

Despite her words, her expression was eager. His own face was heating up, which was unusual for him. His blood ran cold. Futaba complained that made him very uncomfortable to nap on.

Yusuke gripped the plate as she tried to take it from him. He hadn’t finished the hieroglyphs. And the sand dunes hadn’t looked grainy enough. And he couldn’t remember if he had etched claws at the end of the gargoyle’s hands. Could he ask her to return to the proper time, the time he thought she’d arrive based on her average lateness for every other group meeting?

Futaba tugged harder.

Yusuke let go.

His heart raced. He wished it wouldn’t.

She tugged off the cloth and gasped.

The sculpture he’d carved was a replica of her palace. The pyramid rose with its layered tiers next to the pillars with the unfinished hieroglyphs. Both Necronomicon and Prometheus floated on top with tentacles and mechanical arms reaching into the palace.

…he hadn’t remembered the claws on the gargoyle. Futaba wouldn’t notice, but that was no excuse for sloppy work. Yusuke struggled with the urge to grab the sculpture back, hide it, and work on it for another thirteen hours.

“I wanted to remind you how far you’ve come since we defeated your shadow,” he said. What other details could have slipped his attention? He stood on his tip toes to peer at the other side. “To show how your personas conquered your inner darkness. The consumption of the chocolate would mirror how the palace was destroyed…”

This sounded less stupid inside his head. He should’ve kept it there.

“It’s beautiful.” Futaba didn’t seem to be sarcastic, but Yusuke was never sure with her.

She took out her phone and snapped a picture of it. He would rehash their old argument about whether or not she should get an actual camera for optimal picture quality, but it was difficult to think through the loud lub dubs of his beating heart.

Futaba broke off the top of a palm tree, stuck it in her mouth—

—and promptly spit it out. The saliva-covered chocolate blob hit his shirt and slid downwards, leaving a wet trail.

“This tastes like shit.” She sounded a combination of disgusted and impressed. She wiped her mouth.

“I…I did improvise with the recipe.” Had it been one change too many?

“Your chocolate seized,” said Futaba. “That’s why it’s all gritty. You let water touch this?”

“I used it to replace the milk. Since they were both liquids, I did not think it would matter.”

“Doesn’t explain why it tastes burnt.”

Yusuke winced. “I thought doubling the sugar would mask that.”

Futaba laughed. He usually liked her laugh, but it was less pleasant through the sheen of his embarrassment.

“I should have spent more time considering the components of the recipe instead of focusing on appearances,” he said, staring at the floor. His carpet was stained. He needed to borrow Haru’s carpet cleaner again. “Beauty without substance is no beauty at all. I thought I had learned this lesson previously but, well…I apparently need to revisit it.”

“I apologize for calling you here so early to bear witness to my mishap. If you like, you may nap here before classes start.” He sighed and took hold of the plate.

Futaba’s eyes widened. “Hey, that’s mine!”

With a hard tug, she snatched it back towards herself.

Yusuke fell forward with the momentum. His chest met her face, and he grabbed her to steady himself.

They stood centimeters apart, with his hands on her waist. She was so skinny his fingers wrapped around to the small of her back. He wanted to run his hands upward, to trace the bumps of her spine and find the anatomy markers he’d memorized. His figure drawing classes always had well-defined, muscular models. By not varying the body types, was he missing a key part in his path to becoming an artist?

“It’s r-rude to take back a gift.” Futaba drew the chocolate sculpture closer to her. It was the only thing between them.

A rush of hatred for his creation surged through Yusuke. Some of it was for how awful it tasted, but most of it was because it was a barrier between him and her. Yusuke wanted to feel the full movement of Futaba’s chest with her breathing, feel the warmth of her body, feel her heart beat in tandem with his.

“I am sorry. I thought it was unwanted.” He didn’t move. “Are you feeling well?”

Yusuke, personally, was not. It didn’t feel like sickness - no lump in his throat, no chills racketing through him - but he wasn’t sure what else this lightheaded feeling could be. His face was still hot - fever?

“If I’m not, it’s c-cause you poisoned me with this chocolate! Didn’t you taste test it first!?”

“An oversight. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Her face was as red as it was the day she gave him her chocolates last month. She was trembling in his arms.

Yusuke didn’t understand why. He wanted to pull her close, hold her, comfort her.

He wanted to kiss her.

Yusuke leaned forward. Futaba closed her eyes.

He hesitated.

What if she didn’t want to kiss him back?

Yusuke was familiar with rejection. Ann was not the first stranger he’d sauntered up to and asked to paint. He’d chased girls with Akira and Ryuji many times, all without success. It hadn’t mattered, because he hadn’t cared about those girls.

But he cared about Futaba. It would hurt if she didn’t reciprocate. Just considering the possibility sucked the saturation out of his cobalt curtains.

Yusuke let go. He backed away.

Futaba stood frozen where he’d left her. She opened her eyes and swiveled her head around the room. When their eyes met, she ducked her face and moved her hair to cover it. Disappointment? Relief?

Yusuke did not know how to tell if a girl was interested in you. He was not surrounded by examples of healthy relationships. Akira was wildly successful with women, so long as Ryuji wasn’t around to leech his charm, but his flirtatious whirlwinds disinterested Yusuke. He didn’t know what he wanted with Futaba, but it wasn’t that.

Also, if past experiences were any indicator, he would fail miserably imitating Akira’s methods.

How did one begin a courtship? He needed to borrow the romance novels his classmates giggled over. Ann might have some. All Yusuke knew came from his canoeing trip with Akira, when he overheard the siblings nearby say only couples did that together.

“Did you want to rent a boat on the river this Sunday?”

Yusuke blinked. What had possessed him to ask that? He had no money. Futaba didn’t even like outdoor activities. His mind whirled, preparing to blubber something that would distract her.

“Fine.” Shoulders hunched, she turned away from him.

Yusuke clamped his mouth shut.

He’d have to beg a loan off Ryuji. Akira might lend him money.

Actually, no, he should not tell Akira. Or Sojiro. Yusuke wasn’t sure exactly why not, but he had the overwhelming feeling it was in the interest of his greater health to leave them both ignorant.

* * *

**Futaba** : Inari is the dumbest little piece of a personified paintbrush I’ve ever met!!!

**Akira** : Oh no, did he forget about White Day?

**Futaba** : I hate him UGH

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus concludes an awkward first half-step in an awkward romance. I have a couple of ideas floating around for a possible next step, so there’ll probably be a sequel at…some point.
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)


End file.
